SYDNEY, Australia—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Dec. 16, 2004—
Altium Limited (ASX:
ALU), a leading developer of
Windows-based electronics design software, today announced the release
of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for its complete board-level design system,
Protel 2004. SP2 represents the most substantial upgrade to the Protel
system since its debut on Altium's DXP technology integration
platform, and is available as a free download to all existing Protel
DXP and Protel 2004 customers.

SP2 includes more than 150 new features and enhancements, as well
as over 100 updates that will enable designers using Protel to create
more complex designs faster than ever before.

A new Storage Manager forms the hub of enhanced design management
and version control. Storage Manager offers complete project-level
file control and provides an easy-to-use local document history
management system to compare and retrieve older versions of documents.
Enhanced comparison capabilities go beyond detecting electrical
differences with a new graphical comparator engine that makes it easy
to locate and highlight physical changes between revisions of
schematic and PCB files.

Protel's powerful query-based object filtering and editing
features have been significantly upgraded in SP2 to improve ease of
use and streamline global editing of design objects. Designers can now
select a group of components and easily descend into its common
parameters to globally edit attributes of the parameters.
Additionally, designers can add parameters to a component directly
from the Inspector panel.

Enhancements to the PCB editor include faster net analysis,
support for solid polygon pours output as Gerber polygon primitives,
multiple copy and paste operations using the DXP clipboard and support
for copying from a PCB document to the Windows clipboard in WMF
format. SP2 also introduces support for PCB panelization within the
PCB editor using a new Embedded Board Array feature. This feature
allows designers to create a panel containing multiple copies of a
single board or arrays of different boards, which simplifies the
process of preparing boards for fabrication.

In the design capture area, SP2 supports manually defining
component and net classes at the schematic level, as well as enhanced
control over automatic class generation. There are a host of Graphical
User Interface (GUI) upgrades, including: context-sensitive
right-click menus in the schematic editor; enhanced sheet entry and
sheet symbol editing; improved support for heterogeneous component
annotation; the ability to paste text and graphics directly into the
schematic editor; and graphical compile masks which allow designers to
effectively "comment out" portions of the schematic during compilation
and error checking.

Protel 2004 is the industry's only board-level design system that
fully supports the design and integration of FPGA devices right
through to PCB implementation. SP2 strengthens Protel's FPGA
capabilities with the introduction of support for Verilog coding and
source files, allowing Protel designers to mix schematic-based design
with both VHDL and Verilog code to capture FPGA designs. Compiling HDL
source files has been improved with intelligent handling of HDL
hierarchy, so that the system automatically determines the order and
hierarchy of HDL files and compiling is reflected in the project
panel.

"Service Pack 2 represents one of the most significant upgrades
ever made to Protel," said Rob Irwin, Product Manager for DXP
Technologies at Altium. "In terms of refinement, maturity and design
capabilities, SP2 elevates the Protel system beyond anything
previously available and brings with it enhancements that will
increase the productivity of every Protel customer."

SP2 Key Features at a Glance

-- Enhanced project and document management with new Storage
Manager

-- Enhanced version control support with local document history
management

-- Enhanced FPGA design support including the addition of Verilog
for design capture

-- Intelligent hierarchy determination for HDL-based designs

-- Support for Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, German and French
languages installations

Pricing and Availability

Protel 2004 is currently priced at US$7,995. This price also
includes a complimentary Universal JTAG Interface, which allows an
FPGA development or production board to interact "live" with the
LiveDesign-enabled features of Protel 2004. Special pricing is
available to all Protel 99 SE customers wishing to upgrade before 31
December 2004.

For more product information, visit
www.altium.com/protel/ or
contact your local Altium Sales and Support Center.

About Altium Limited

Altium Limited (ASX:
ALU) is a global developer and supplier of
electronics design software for the Microsoft Windows environment.
Founded in 1985, Altium released the world's first Microsoft
Windows-based printed circuit board design tool in 1991 and continues
to provide advanced, easy-to-use and affordable software design tools
to electronics engineers, designers, and developers worldwide.
Altium's products offer tailored solutions covering a range of
hardware and software design processes including the Nexar, Protel,
P-CAD and TASKING brands. Altium is headquartered in Sydney, Australia
and has sales and support offices in Australia, the United States,
Japan, Europe and China. More information is available at
www.altium.com.

Altium, CAMtastic, CircuitStudio, Design Explorer, DXP,
LiveDesign, NanoBoard, NanoTalk, Nexar, nVisage, P-CAD, Protel, Situs,
TASKING, and Topological Autorouting and their respective logos are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Altium Limited or its
subsidiaries. All other registered or unregistered trademarks
referenced herein are the property of their respective owners, and no
trademark rights to the same are claimed.